Someone Ordered Your Background Check? It’s a Scam!

by Bright Side Newspapers • February 9, 2015 • Comments Off on Someone Ordered Your Background Check? It’s a Scam!

Dottie Calina from the Better Business Bureau shares this warning.

Be on the lookout for this creepy email scam that states someone doing a background check on you. The fake messages claim someone ordered a background check on you, but it’s really a ploy to get you to click an infected link.

How the Scam Works:
You receive an email with the subject line: “Someone recently viewed your background-information.” Curious, you open it. The message claims to be an automatically generated notification that someone “has just recently ordered the results of your background-check.”

Interested in who requested information about you? At the bottom of the message is a link to “find out more about this new-scan.” You may be curious, but don’t click the link! This email is a scam, and the link will download malware to your computer.

How to Spot a Scam Email:
In general, it’s best not to click on links that come in unsolicited emails. Here are some more ways to spot a malicious email just in case your spam filter doesn’t catch it.

The email claims to have information about you, but you never signed up for it. Scams often pretend to be personalized for you, but they are actually blast emails. Don’t fall for this! If you never signed up for custom email alerts, you shouldn’t be receiving them.

Check out the “From” field: Scammers have the ability to mask email addresses, making the message appear to come from a legitimate source. But they don’t always use it. Look out for email addresses that don’t match the brand used in the email message.

Watch for typos, strange phrasing and bad grammar. Scammers can easily copy a brand’s logo and email format, but awkward wording and poor grammar are typically a giveaway that the message is a scam. In the example above, the strange hyphens in “background-information” and “new-scan” are a telltale sign.

Hover over URLs to reveal their true destination. Typically, the hyperlinked text will say one thing, but the link will point somewhere else. Scammers either set up fake websites or hack into third-party sites and use them to host malware.

For More Information
To find out more about other scams, check out BBB Scam Stopper.
To find companies you can trust, please visit bbb.org.